Most people generally interact with computers through the use of a keyboard and/or a mouse to input information into the computer and through a display screen to receive information from the computer. However, people with blindness or severe sight impairment are often unable to use a display screen to interact with a computer. Accordingly, many such people rely on assistive-technology programs such as screen readers to receive information from computer systems.
A screen reading assistive-technology program reads the content on a screen aloud, so that it can be heard by a person who is unable to view the screen. Such programs are not limited to use by sight-impaired people, but the majority of users of screen reading programs have some level of sight impairment. There are multiple screen reading programs available, including Job Access With Speech (“JAWS”) from Freedom Scientific, Window-Eyes from GW Micro, Dolphin Supernova by Dolphin Computer Access, and open-source products such as NonVisual Desktop Access (“NVDA”).
When using web-based services, such as a social media platform, a computer user typically accesses these services through a web browser, such as Microsoft's Edge or Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, or Mozilla's Firefox. This process is known in the art and generally involves having a web-based service send content over a network to the browser, which displays the content. The browser then sends back text, clicks, and other user-provided content, allowing the user to interact with the service.
To allow sight-impaired users access to web-based services, many screen-reading programs work with one or more web browsers to read the content sent by the web service. Similarly, these programs (along with other assistive-technology programs such as voice-recognition software like Nuance Communication's Dragon Naturally Speaking) work with or through the browser to send text and clicks back to the web-based service based on verbal instructions by the user. For example, a user may say “click on <some link>,” and the program will “click” on that link.
While assistive-technology programs, such as screen readers, have become more advanced and are capable of parsing complex web pages, because these programs are often incapable of determining which parts of a web page should be read first (and which parts should be skipped entirely), the screen-reading experience is often less efficient and less engaging than a traditional screen-viewing experience. This creates difficulties for web-based systems because the services wish to create even more complex and visually-appealing web pages to attract and retain users, but do not want to prevent assistive-technology programs from being able to use them.